


Stay (The Bleed)

by flammablehat



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Dubious Consent, F/M, Female Character of Color, Mind Control, POV Female Character, Season/Series 05 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flammablehat/pseuds/flammablehat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur isn't the only one who has suffered betrayal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay (The Bleed)

**Author's Note:**

> Set prior to episode 5x09 ("With All My Heart") with spoilers though 5x08 ("The Hollow Queen"). Vague reference to plot elements in episode 5x09. Beta provided by Sophinisba, who is the best.

Her days are full of urgency now. The urgency of purpose, of clandestine meetings and small, preparatory measures. She follows instructions and does what needs doing, and the days spin by like fluttering pages in the wind. 

The nights are different. The nights slow, stutter. Gwen would never willingly delay meeting Morgana, or go to her a moment later than planned, but she sometimes wishes they could linger awhile after they’ve concluded their business. She wishes they could dine together and loosen the tense muscles in their necks over a goblet of wine. Gwen wishes she could stall her walks back to Camelot, back through the corridors of her castle and past her bowing men at arms — all of them servants at heart. 

Because in Arthur’s chambers (a kingdom and a battleground she won’t be able to scour him from until he is dead), urgency seems to thin. They dine together and share the wine Merlin pours, speaking quietly of the day. The only expectation of her in this place is her presence. To see Arthur smile at her, one would think she was as fortifying as any drink, any meal, any rest he could take. Fog clouds Gwen’s mind when he smiles that way. She smoothes the flinching his touches inspire, hearing Morgana’s whisper in her ear, Morgana’s chill hand upon her thigh, bidding her to spread her legs for the usurper. _He mustn’t know, he mustn’t suspect._

The part Gwen dreads the most is the unsettling sensation that she’s changing hands, because Arthur’s hold is unlike Morgana’s. His palms are square and warm, gentle at her waist and back. 

When he kisses her, he grins like a little boy stealing favours. They strip each other, and she feels a withering in her gut under his gaze. Pride and hunger do not belong on the face of the defeated, just as shame has no home in the heart of the victorious. She cannot believe how oblivious, how _dense_ he is, wielding his masculinity like an animal: squeezing and lifting her, putting his teeth to her in a pantomime of dominance. She wishes it didn’t make her back arch. She wishes that she weren’t so eager to expose her own neck. 

His prick hangs between them, hard and gleaming at the tip. He nudges at her chin with his nose, kissing her throat as he settles his hips over hers. Gwen braces herself with a sharp inhale and closes her eyes. He breathes, steadying his form, then thrusts. It hurts. It hurts like the very first time, except the pain is a deeper pain, a betrayal of her mind by her body. Arthur is heat and weight, the sweat gathering between her breasts and beading across the muscles of his shoulders, between their groins. Arthur is the tickle of fingers under her thigh, lifting her leg more firmly around his waist. Arthur is panting breath over her skin, strands of her hair sticking to his lips as he drags his mouth under her jaw and calls her _queen, goddess, Guinevere._

Elyan once taught her that some wounds are better left pierced, arrow shafts or blades left buried in flesh to staunch a more fatal loss of blood. She remembers this lesson every time Arthur finishes inside her, somehow fearing his withdrawal even more than she hates his love. 

Her thighs clench around his hips as he sits up, reflexive. He doesn’t see the confusion, the anxiety she folds behind an indulgent smile, and another shiver of disgust climbs down her spine. A part of her wants him to notice, to sense that something is not quite right. It is only a small part, the part of her that hurts to have him near, the part that remembers him before it remembers terror or the comfort of Morgana’s guidance and wisdom. She waits, still as a hunted deer, until his eyes go soft at her, dark, because in his simple mind she is his wife, free to make him servant to her desires. 

He draws her more firmly into his lap, settling her so that his fingers are free to play with her sex. He is slow when she wants him to be fast, methodical though she wants him careless. He is too intimate, too familiar. She locks her ankles in the small of his back and comes, and in the freedom of release she almost begs him to stay, with her and inside her. 

But Morgana’s voice speaks in her thoughts again, reminding her that a true king would have known she was lost to him — a true king would have known the moment the heart of his citadel was compromised. And the phantoms of Morgana’s cold fingers touch Gwen’s throat, freeze the words on her tongue, and save her from herself.


End file.
